JACKSON, Wyo. — On Tuesday, April 23, the Teton County School Board voted to approve a $5,000 High Deductible Cigna health care plan for teachers and employees.
During the regular board meeting on April 17, TCSD teachers voiced opposition to the proposed insurance plans, citing the substantial increase in out-of-pocket expenses combined with the stagnate nature of their salaries. The plan selected was renewing option two of the high deductible plan. The other option on the table did not allow staff to choose among plan options.
According to Teton County School District (TCSD), the state has allocated $8.2 million to fund insurance benefits, but this is not sufficient to cover recent increases in health care premiums.
Dr. Gillian Chapman, TCSD #1 Superintendent, explained that the school district has used its budget reserves to cover insurance rate increases over the past two years. According to Chapman, 2022 costs went up 4.1%, which calculates to approximately $13,000 per person.
“So, what we are seeing is not unusual…the health care crisis is not slowing,” Chapman said. “We are the only district in Wyoming to offer full family health, dental and vision at no cost to the employee. We knew that a funding click was going to hit us eventually, we used reserves in the past to off-set some of these expenses so it didn’t impact our employees. We used the majority of our reserves two years ago, to offset insurance costs. Our team examined every single scenario.”
At the Tuesday night meeting, Kristen Mayo, TCSD Executive Director of Resources, addressed teacher salaries, and said that compensation rates are based on the state funding model, but that they can work to change it.
Mayo also said that TCSD’s budget cannot compete with higher insurance rates and this means teacher salaries are impacted. She also said that due to limited funding, insurance won’t be the only tough funding issue that the schools will face.
“Salaries are 87% of our budget,” Mayo said. “There isn’t anywhere else that we can take money from…we are limited in the amount of funding that we receive…there’s other outside pressures on our budget besides insurance.”
Mayo presented to the board past insurance rate data and budget costs which have impacted the school district.
According to Mayo, there was a dramatic increase in insurance rates, almost 26%, from year 2022 to 2023. She said that this year the increase was 6%, causing renewal rates to rise to almost 30% for traditional plans and 23 to 24% for high deductible plans for fiscal year 2025.
“So people are saying, ‘If it’s 6%, why am I seeing a 200% increase in the renewal rate?,’ it’s because they are not seeing the whole rate, just the employee rate,” Mayo said. “The public did not get to see the increased rates from the prior year. A single, traditional plan went up from $1,986 to $2,578 per month for 2025.”
In consideration of faculty being economically impacted by the new health insurance plan, School Board Trustee Keith Gingery addressed the board with his hopes that teachers will be given a raise to off-set costs.
“My vote for this plan is in anticipation that money from the school’s budget will then be freed up to potentially give a substantial raise to employees in the compensation package,” Gingery said.
While no one from the public (online or in-person) addressed the board during the comment period at the end of the meeting, the board stated that they read and considered everyone’s comments and letters over the weekend.
